There’s a feeling of electricity running through a particular Dalhousie University laboratory these days.

“We’re very excited here,” said Jeff Dahn, a physics, chemistry and process engineering professor at the Halifax university who has been working on lithium-ion battery technology for the past 19 years.

“The students are bouncing off the walls and really looking forward to next June when we start up with Tesla.”

The excitement surrounds a five-year research partnership between Dalhousie and Tesla Motors of California.

Calling it the “first university collaboration of this nature that Tesla has ever made on the planet,” Dahn said the work will be a continuation of the research that he has been doing for the better part of 20 years with the sponsorship of 3M Canada.

“I’ve built up a large lab here that’s a world-leading facility and the move to Tesla won’t change in a fundamental way what we do here, but it will change in a fundamental way how our discoveries impact lithium-ion batteries because Tesla will be a huge producer.”

He said Tesla is constructing a gigafactory near Reno, Nev., that will double the world production of lithium-ion batteries. Most of the world’s production now exists in Asia.

“At the moment, when we discover something useful, 3M will try to interest battery makers in those materials. Maybe there is some success and maybe there is not. But 3M does not make batteries, they make battery materials. Whereas when we are working directly with what will be the largest battery maker in the world, our inventions will have direct application if they are beneficial. For us, that’s really exciting.”

Tesla has automotive and energy divisions, and the energy side will be producing units for storing energy from the grid for commercial and homeowners’ use.

“If you have a solar panel and want to store electricity and use it at night, you can buy something called the power wall and that will charge up when the sun shines and power your house at night.”

Dahn said the Tesla Model 3 car is expected to go into production around 2018 and the intent is to have an electric vehicle for sale at a price of about $35,000.

“With the enormous savings in fuel and maintenance over the lifetime of the car, you’ll be better off than a $20,000 gas car.”

It is Dahn’s job to make the cars even more economical by improving the lithium-ion power source.

“To last longer and have a greater energy storage per unit weight and also cost less, that’s a big materials challenge to bring the cost down as much as you possibly can in all areas of the cell. Those are the main goals.”

Dahn wasn’t divulging how much the Tesla deal was worth, but he said it’s a “decent package” that will keep his group of graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and technical staff “who don’t make an enormous salary” at work. And the deal will support the equipment, chemicals and materials that he and his researchers need to do their work.

On June 8 of next year, Dahn will begin work with Tesla, ending his affiliation with 3M.

The province’s big battery-maker, Surrette Battery Co. Ltd., is also looking into lithium-ion batteries, but its interest is still at the most preliminary of stages.

“We’re not manufacturing any lithium batteries nor, in our current facility, could we be able to produce lithium,” company president Jamie Surrette said of the company that has been in business in Springhill more than 55 years.

“It’s a totally different process, totally different chemistry. You couldn’t mix lead acid and lithium production in the same facility.”

But Surrette said the company is working with the federal Industrial Research Assistance Program “to look at the feasibility of lithium in our current market and expanded market.”

The company manufactures lead-acid batteries for railroad, marine and solar applications.